


Last Trip to Palo Alto

by FinallyAutumn



Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU, Gen, Sammy graduates, Stanford Era (Supernatural), behold the sadness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-07
Updated: 2019-09-07
Packaged: 2020-10-11 20:30:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20552255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FinallyAutumn/pseuds/FinallyAutumn
Summary: Dean drives to Palo Alto to attend an important event: the last chance to see his brother.





	Last Trip to Palo Alto

The last sign said Embarcadero Rd W and that meant Dean was almost there. 

On the radio the Smiths were singing of how you should please please please let them get what they want, the sun shone bright, even through his sunglasses, and the wide roads were almost empty. Dean thought it was strange. Those had to be some seriously trafficked roads, but this morning there was an eerie emptiness. It was almost like finding yourself in another reality. Not that Dean minded. He was used to different, more relaxing roads. Finding the exact address, in time, and finding a place to park that boat of a car was a little more difficult, but he managed. He also had to park a little far away, and then walk back to the gate of the stadium. A damn stadium, he couldn't believe it.  
He thought this was going to be something slightly more intimate, dunno, in a campus' green field or something. He evidently underestimated the number of graduates of this year. He made an effort to wear jeans that weren't artfully ripped at the knee, but looking at the other students' relatives he felt underdressed now. However, once inside the stadium nobody really would look at him: he would go back being a hunter expert in disappearing. 

After 2001 life wasn't what it used to be, in more than one way for Dean. So somebody asked him for an invitation and a document. Dean straightened his back, took off his sunglasses, put on his best, most blinding smile and got out the invitation with his seat number. People were still too trusting, though. They just assumed that the grads were automatically OK with their relatives being there. Dean entered the stadium, but was immediately disappointed when he realized that the seats on the field were entirely going to be occupied by the grads. He was going to seat so much far away from the stage. A familiar pain, like a dagger in his chest, and that had nothing to do with almost dying in New Orleans a few months ago, made itself known again, but he managed to push it down: it's not about you. 

Dean found his seat. Then, from his backpack he took out his binoculars. And a baseball cap. He wasn't certainly unprepared. On the field an endless and colorful flow of kids was entering, while the audience was already sitting down. Dean tried to look at the boys down there, but there were so many, and some of them were wearing masks and..costumes? What the hell was that? Anyway, some of them had their face covered. The more Dean tried to understand, the less he did.  
No, wait. Now another stream of boys and girls was coming in, and they were properly dressed as Dean imagined: with grad cap and gown... Dean just raised his eyebrows and shook his head a little, before raising his binoculars again. He put them down for a second, he thought he saw something... oh yeah it was a bloodstain right there on one of the lenses. Dean cleaned it with a tissue, then looked through them again.  
Most of the kids were wearing sunglasses, and many were on the phone. dean didn't get why, until he saw them waving blindly towards the stands: they were telling their relatives the exact moment they were entering the field, because it was too hard to find them by just looking. 

Dean thought he found the floppy-haired young man he was looking for. He wasn't on the phone, nor was wearing sunglasses. he had a more sober portament, even thought he slouched al little. Yes, it was Sam. The man who decided to be an only child four years ago. Next to him walked two boys and a blonde girl. They were very close, brushing shoulders with him, so Dean decided they had to be Sam's dearest friends. Judging by body language, behind them other acquaintances were following. Dean lowered his binocular for a moment. He was feeling something, but didn't know what. He wasn't sure that mixes of feelings had a name. This mix was happiness for Sam, just a tad of jealousy, nostalgia for something that never was, and maybe a little concern for the future of those friendships. Was Sam pretending? Was he really feeling like himself in that moment? Was he going to see those people after the end of this day? Were any of them going to be there for him, help him in his most difficult moments? Help him if he couldn't find a job? If he needed a place to sleep? 

But Dean realized he was still reasoning like a big brother, and scrutinizing those skinny kids as if they were candidates to substitute him, and their appearance alone was sufficient to establish their worth. He had to reason like a hunter, instead. A hunter can't afford to need anyone. And despite everything. Sam had been raised like one. Sam didn't need anyone in this world. Not really. The people he surrounded himself with were a careful choice, not a necessity, Dean knew as much.  
He tried to calm himself down. Tried to jokingly compare himself to a middle-aged mom in his mind. One of those around him in white hats who were starting to suffer the sun. 

When the ceremony started Dean realized he wasn't listening to a single word. He was looking at Sam's back, his eye incapable of looking away, and wondering how Sam was feeling . He hoped great. There were some special 'welcomes', some well-known names of families were saluted, because their nieces and nephews were graduating there that day. Dean wondered how many got to that point through their families help, and how many were.. like Sam. He looked at Sam's back again and lost all the words again, flowing in the air, like birds he was not going to see again. Sam was sitting really still. But it was typical of him. He didn't cheer, applaud, look around. But Dean could tell he was relaxed. And mimicking. Mimicking everyone: the average boy his age the average grad, the average, innocent civilian who has never seen anything supernatural in his life, the average honest, law abiding citizen. Maybe it wasn't an intentional imitation, but Dean knew deep down it was.  
Dean looked at Sam's shoulders and his polite posture, and all he saw was the polite child he had been. He saw him in his mind at the age of four, at the age of eight, at the age of thirteen, at the age of seventeen. Then he couldn't know his face anymore, in the last four years Sam had only been a recorded voice telling him not to call ever again, and after that he had been just silence. But he loved them all, all the Sams who had been, all the Sams that will be.  
He never, ever would have said this to anyone, but he had raised Sam, no one else; and he allowed himself, for the first time, to think that he raised him well. Sam was a good man. Strong, resourceful, with a great will, and now he could do without him. Dean knew it was him that couldn't do without Sam but he would try and survive that. He had survived the impossible in the last months. Maybe it was a lie, maybe it wasn't. Right now it didn't matter, that was another thought to push down now. 

On stage, people were talking so much. Still not a concept that Dean could relate to.  
The binoculars were resting on his lap, the sunglasses on his cap. At the "will the candidates for the school of law please rise..." he opened his small black backpack again and put away binoculars and hat in it. The glasses he put in his pocket. Then, he took out a brand new expensive Canon. Two people sitting next to him glanced at it, admiringly, not knowing that photo camera consisted of all the money he won hustling pool for the last month. He really liked it. But he would resell it in a few weeks. The Impala guzzled gas as if there were no tomorrow.  
"...I'm delighted to confer publicly the degrees..." no, wait, what? The grads weren't going on stage to get a diploma? Were they being 'collectively' nominated graduates? Or had there been another ceremony beforehand, of which Dean knew nothing about? Dean's lips slightly parted, him being deep in thought, while his need for a new plan was navigating around his disappointment. He understood there were too many grads, he just didn't know there were this many. Why was this more incomprehensible than an ancient spell? 

Dean silently cursed years of watching TV in motel rooms: he only knew grad ceremonies from fake-ass TV shows.

The Dean of Sam's school presented them all as graduates. Now Sam cheered. But nobody ever said his name. Nobody shook his hand. So far, he was just a black cap among a sea of other caps, and to Dean that didn't feel right. When a choir got on stage, like at the beginning, Dean knew the ceremony was about to end, so he got up, while everyone else was still seated, he walked calmly, but with his heart pounding, found his way to the tunnel that opens on the field. He trusted that with a bit of luck he could get near the grads. Some of them weren't wearing their gown, some because it was too hot, some because they entered the field funny costumes. Two particularly loud boys jumped up, threw their arms around each other and posed for the camera of a third boy who was filming them. They had left their black gowns on their seat, practically sitting on them. As if it were a rag, as if it didn't represent years of hard work. Dean had a feeling those guys hadn't worked as hard as Sam in that strange place. One of the two gowns was half on the ground, it was going to drop on the green grass in five minutes. Dean decided to put his 'talents' to use and stole it with a smooth movement while walking behind their seats, as if he were picking up his own gown. He kept on walking with nonchalance, donning the gown; no need for a cap, not everybody was wearing it, but he took out his sunglasses again.  
After a sort of a prayer (Dean really wasn't an expert) everybody stood up and lazily started walking out or chatting with friends. Dean put his backpack on one of his shoulders, his camera in one hand, lower almost resting on a hip. He finally got near Sam. The mass of black gowns was swarming out, and his little brother was walking with his friends. Dean could finally see his face. He bet he was out of practice. He hoped he was still afraid of the dark. he should have been, intelligent people are. And what was he gonna do? Just gonna live some normal, apple pie life? Was that it? He looked good, all things considered. And he still looked like a kid to Dean. No matter just how tall that kid insisted on being (was he even taller now??). 

Dean walked past them, turned around quickly and took a couple of beautiful photos. All those years photographing carcasses and footprints in the woods had been a good practice. In the camera's frame, Sam was looking up from under his cap at something in the sky, behind him the name of the university in giant letters above the stands.  
Dean kept walking, still ahead of his brother but looking at his feet. He still wasn't happy. Sam didn't look totally happy. He had his pensive face on. Outside, his friends suddenly left him for a moment: they were quickly going to hug their parents and siblings. Sam smiled politely at everyone, but for a few minutes he was practically alone in a sea of people. Dean wanted so much to walk up to him, but thought against it. He wasn't going to be welcomed with the expression he was looking for into Sam's eyes. Probably would have had to listen to something like: " What the hell are you doing here?". He stayed still, for a moment that seemed to last forever. It was like he was trying to read Sam's future in his face, but just couldn't imagine anything different than being as free as air, driving on an open road, sometimes having some wounds stitched under gauze and your clothes, but for that feeling as if your life was even more sweet, using every possible gun invented, seeing (every now and then) the face of grateful strangers waving you goodbye.

The blonde pretty girl walked back to Sam and looked at her parents, Dean tried to un-freeze taking a quick picture and he was happy about it: in the photo Sam and Blonde were looking in the same direction, looked the most serene couple he had ever seen, the bright eyes only a couple in their early twenties can have. Sam looked at some trees that were being shaken by a hot breeze, letting some leaves fall: Dean took a great picture of his profile. He looked like someone who remembered a good day in his childhood, but Dean knew it wasn't true. Sam was just amused by the shower of leaves. And there were no happy days in his childhood. Not by Sam's standards, anyway. For a second, he wished he had a photo of Sam looking at him.  
All the families around him were getting crazy with their cameras, and Dean looked at them to see if they were doing anything different. Years ago he promised to himself that whatever happened he would be there that day. And he would do what a big brother would do: take good pictures of something that wasn't going to happen again. Trying to freeze the good memories. The other parents had the opportunity to talk to their kids, asking them to pose, but Dean thought he had the best photos of the day. That was what normal people do, right? Keep photos of a grad day. 

For at least five minutes he thought about sending Sam a copy of the photos. He would have had something from that day. And they would be photos of him at the center of the frame, not casually on the side of a group, maybe with an arm cut out of the photo because some boisterous father was mainly focusing on his son, seeing Sam as 'background' for his little spoiled 'genius' of a brat. Sam wouldn't just be in somebody else's photos.

But then he remembered that in a 'normal' world being photographed like that looks a little creepy. He reflected for a moment. No, he wasn't going to creep Sam out. Those photos were just for Dean. They would go in a practical album, nothing fancy, but actually resistant, maybe waterproof, at the bottom of the trunk of the Impala, travelling with him forever. Or until he was too debilitated to keep hunting and actually needed an actual house to live in.  
He was afraid Sam would have climbed in a car and went away alone, or remained alone on the sidewalk, but instead the blonde's group was clearly proposing to give him a lift. 

Those were the last moments Dean had. 

He put the camera in the backpack.  
Sam took off his cap. His hair moved a little in the warm breeze. Same haircut he had years ago, when he left. Maybe his neck was a little bigger, maybe he was a little taller, or maybe he just had a different stance?  
Dean slowly went to stand behind the tree that had lost its leaves.  
Finally after many fake polite smiles with closed lips, somebody said something that made him actually smile, Hollywood-white teeth and all, the expression actually reaching his eyes.  
Then a group of people started approaching a car, doors were opened and closed, Sam's tall figure disappeared inside.  
So that was it, Dean thought: that was the last time he was going to see his brother, in the back of somebody else's car. 

The car went down the road, took a right turn and disappeared.  
Dean felt as if somebody had ripped one of his internal organs out of his chest.  
He slipped out of the black gown, casually hanged it on a lower branch of the tree and started walking towards the Impala.  
Looking down, he thought he was more and more certain of something: unlike Sam, he was never going to be an only child. He was going to be a brother forever.  
If one night, at the end of a tough day, in a seedy bar, another hunter was going to ask him if he had anyone, he would always answer, yes, a brother. Somewhere.


End file.
